


Lands Beyond the Sky

by Shachaai



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Multi, there's a mild bit of unnamed dennor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-24 21:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19731733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shachaai/pseuds/Shachaai
Summary: “Many frequently forget that the Marches are borderlands,” says the consort, and when he turns his head to look at Glória, his eyes and the stones set in the circlet on his pale hair glitter like ice. “A buffer space between two kingdoms. To the south of us is Lytheria, and to the north…”“Wasteland.” Glória shivers, and wishes dearly that she had worn a longer-sleeved gown. Her arms and shoulders are bare to the winter night, designed to show off the glow of her skin and the golden armlets and bracelets wrapped around her muscles like snakes. “I have been north of this castle before, your highness; there is nothing out there except cold and beautiful wilderness and white bears.”“You’ve been out there in thedaylight,”the consort corrects her, and his tone is chilly enough Glória shivers again. “Not in the darkness, when the Veil is dancing in the sky.”





	Lands Beyond the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my tumblr.
> 
> Fantasy/Snow Queen-esque AU f!Port/Eng, with blatant unnamed DenNor being a royal married couple in the background. This is a case where I know the fic that resulted from the prompt (Christmas Lights) is absolutely not what the prompt originally referenced/intended, but as the saying goes: you can lead a fic-writer to water, but you cannot make those evil shits drink.
> 
> Glória = f!Portugal

The Sovereign Prince of the Northern Marches is an exuberant, cheerful man, but even his face grows grave when the night sky above his fortress is lit with waves of shimmering, weaving lights. The Veil. At the opening of that evening’s ball, he gathers all his guests and people, warning everyone not to leave the warmth and safety of his walls whilst the lights are dancing in the sky, and that, above all else, one should always be guarded but polite to strangers.

“That is hardly in line with the _warmth_ we are supposed to be fostering between our lands,” Glória, Countess of Ophiussa and ambassador from the Kingdom of Lytheria in the south, says to the prince consort standing beside her. Since Glória was appointed Lytheria’s ambassador, they often end up standing together at events like these, united in their shared history with the Marches’ ruler: the prince and Glória had once been betrothéd in their youth, and, the betrothal long since broken, the consort is now married to him. “Isn’t basic civility, especially when guarded, a step backwards in the relationship?”

The Prince Consort of the Northern Marches is a strange, quiet man, with stranger eyes, cool and clear and ancient as a glacier. People whisper things about him because of it, that he talks to the wind in the midst of blizzards, that his blood is not all human, that his grandparents were born in the unknown lands beyond the Veil.

Fairytales, all of it. 

“Many frequently forget that the Marches are borderlands,” says the consort, and when he turns his head to look at Glória, his eyes and the stones set in the circlet on his pale hair glitter like ice. “A buffer space between two kingdoms. To the south of us is Lytheria, and to the north…”

“Wasteland.” Glória shivers, and wishes dearly that she had worn a longer-sleeved gown. Her arms and shoulders are bare to the winter night, designed to show off the glow of her skin and the golden armlets and bracelets wrapped around her muscles like snakes. “I have been north of this castle before, your highness; there is nothing out there except cold and beautiful wilderness and white bears.”

“You’ve been out there in the _daylight,_ ” the consort corrects her, and his tone is chilly enough Glória shivers again. “Not in the darkness, when the Veil is dancing in the sky.”

“You believe the old stories?” Glória forces herself to smile, friendly instead of mocking. Her grandmother had told her and her little brother the tales of the Veil when they had both been small enough to sit on her lap, fantastical stories of the magical Kingdom of the _Others,_ a place found in the north, beyond the wind and the fire, beyond the unpredictable Veil in the star-strewn sky, inhabited by the children of angels and monsters. A place of magic and dreams. “That another kingdom magically appears and disappears just because of some lights in the sky?”

The consort just looks at her. “Do you think, just because a story is old, it cannot, even in part, be true?” 

With everyone gathered indoors, the ball grows claustrophobic. Elbows are knocked and toes are trodden on, and Glória eats and drinks and talks and dances with everyone who asks her to. Then she drinks some more, because she is hot and tired and thirsty, and then more still, because the northern wine is heady and addictive.

When she stumbles outside, somehow unseen by everybody else, she isn’t thinking of anything very much except for getting some fresh air. She has drunk enough to know she has drunk a _little_ too much, and feels flushed from throat to fingertips.

There is somebody already in the frost-laced gardens in which Glória finds herself: a man wrapped in thick white furs, honey-blond and pale as most people are from north of Ophiussa. When he turns his head to look at Glória his eyes are very pretty and very green and very noticeable even in the dark, for they seem to catch all the light coming from the castle windows, from the dancing Veil in the sky overhead, and glow.

 _“Oh,_ ” says Glória, and stares at him.

“Good evening,” says the man, and seems amused when he looks back at her, his gaze flicking very obviously from the tumbling brown curls swept back from Glória’s face, to her bare arms, to the long golden dress whose hemline is already picking up damp from the snow underfoot. Glória’s cheeks burn hot. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“I am the ambassador from Lytheria, Glória Fernandes, Countess of Ophiussa.”

“Your Ladyship,” says Glória’s companion, bending as far as he can in the waist in such thick furs, a black-gloved hand reaching up to press against his heart. He has snowflakes in his hair. “I am Lord Arthur, kin of the prince consort here.”

“He has _family?_ ”

Lord Arthur smiles - and it is a crooked, conspiratorial thing rather than a unkind one, as though he is sharing some great secret with Glória rather than making her the butt of his joke. It’s a nice smile, though his face looks like it’s unaccustomed to wearing it. “Do you think he sprang from the soil fully-grown?”

Glória has no reply for that, because _of course_ she doesn’t believe that.

“Aren’t you cold?” Lord Arthur asks her, nodding at Glória’s bare arms, the metal jewellery she wears that is already dropping rapidly in temperature in the outside air. Winter in the Northern Marches is no laughing matter, especially when Glória is much better suited to the dryer heat of Ophiussa. “You must use my furs.”

Glória attempts to protest - “I do not think -” but, already, Lord Arthur has swept his furs from his shoulders and approached her, the heavy bundle of white in his arms pressed into her hands.

She does not know what animal the furs came from, but they are warm, from Lord Arthur’s body, and so thick and _soft._ Glória is putting them on before she can even think about it, tucking her chin down into her collarbone to appreciate the softness of her new garb against her cheek. “Thank you, my lord.”

“It would reflect poorly on our hosts were you to die of cold in their garden.” Lord Arthur seems to be as pleased to see Glória wearing his furs as Glória is to now be wearing them, his strange eyes brightening when Glória pulls her hair out from under their collar to lay on top. Glória hadn’t realised how _cold_ she had been until she had donned the furs, the alcohol in her blood hiding her body’s discomfort from her brain. “Although you would undoubtedly make a lovely ice sculpture.”

“I think that might interfere with my ambassadorial duties,” Glória laughs, pulling the edge of the furs a little closer to her body and luxuriating in the protection from the night they provide.

Lord Arthur seems warm enough without them; under his furs, he seems to have been wearing at least two more layers, gold-embroidered robes in blue and black the like that Glória has never seen before. The clothes cover him everywhere but his face, and his mussed hair and fringe provide some cover for his ears and forehead, though, this close, Glória can see the pink colour in his cheeks from the winter wind.

“They must write poems to your beauty, in Lytheria.”

Glória laughs - and then belatedly, by the steadiness of his gaze holding hers, realises that her companion seems to be quite serious, and flusters, unsure what to do. She is currently too tired and _tipsy_ for compliments like that, and cannot quite tell if Lord Arthur means what he says as an innocent comment on aesthetics or as flirtation. There is too much Veil-light dancing in his eyes for Glória to read him, a shield of shimmering colours.

“My little brother wrote me a poem once,” she says instead, as a mild diversion.

Lord Arthur seems content to go along with it. “Yes?”

“It was called _Glória ate all the fish like a great big fat whale from the sea._ ”

Lord Arthur is already grinning again, enough that Glória cannot help grinning back at him. He has a very peculiar kind of charisma, this one, charming in its oddity. “It sounds like a classic.”

“Oh, it _was_.” Much to their parents’ mirth before Glória’s brother had been made to apologise for being mean to his sister. Glória had written its words upon her heart - because of her righteous, childish indignation at the time, although the years passing mean now the memory is just something she can laugh at.

“ _Glória ate all the fish_

_Like a great big fat whale from the sea._

_When they have to harpoon her_

_From the back of a schooner_

_They’ll fry her and serve her with tea._

_They’ll send her bones to the dressers_

_And her blubber will burn through the night_

_And I hope that will teach her_

_Not to be a horrible creature_

_And eat all the fish in one bite._ ”

“Your little brother seems to have been holding something of a grudge when he composed that one.”

“I think he got one of his friends to help him write it,” Glória confesses, and then laughs again at the memory. The wine has made it very easy for her to laugh tonight, especially when her company laughs along with her. “But the grudge was all his.”

 _“Did_ you eat all the fish?”

“Just the fish _he_ wanted. Not on _purpose!”_ Glória adds quickly, seeing the question hovering on Lord Arthur’s parted lips. “How cruel a big sister do you think I am?”

“I should get to know you better before I decide something like that.” A tactical answer. Lord Arthur steps a little closer to her - already being close, the tips of his boots now brush the hem of Glória’s gown, and his green, light-sparkling gaze seems to swallow Glória’s own. “I should _like_ to get to know you better.”

“Of _course_ you would,” says Glória, teasingly tossing back her hair like she has seen her cousins do at their most vain. “It cannot be _every_ night a beautiful woman charms you out of your clothes.”

 _“Some_ of my clothes,” Lord Arthur corrects her.

“I had to leave myself room for improvement.”

There are teeth in Lord Arthur’s grin now, a flash of brightness in the dark garden even as his cheeks seem to develop a darker blush. It is really quite sweet. “Are you warmer now?”

Glória is, despite the way the snow is making her dress cling to her ankles, moisture catching in the curls of her hair. The droplets glitter under the stars. “Much, I thank you.”

Lord Arthur tilts his head, examining her, and Glória, despite her dress and borrowed furs, feels uncomfortably transparent. “…But you are still feeling the cold. With your permission, I could assist with that.”

“You have my permission as long as you are not taking something _else_ off,” Glória says, and smiles, unable to resist continuing their teasing. “At least not until you find yourself some warmer surroundings. What would I tell the consort if you freeze?”

“I’m quite good with the cold,” Lord Arthur confides in her, his head dipping closer to Glória’s, as though he is going to impart more silliness, more secrets.

He does not. Instead, Lord Arthur kisses her, the fingers of his gloves butter-soft when they slip under the fall of Glória’s hair to press light upon her nape. His mouth is chaste and cool, and the coolness of its touch sweeps through Glória’s veins, head to toes.

When the sensation passes and their lips part, Glória does not feel the cold any more.

Arthur’s furs prickle under her chin, and a sense of foreboding twists in her gut. “…What did you just do?”

“I thought that was obvious?” Arthur smiles at her again, and Glória is a little concerned, now, that she still finds it charismatic. So close, it is easier to see that the smile is disconnected between Arthur’s mouth and his eyes, and, though their pupils are fat with darkness, Glória can see as much of the dancing Veil in Arthur’s eyes as she can do in the night sky over their heads. His thumb is rubbing back and forth just under her hairline, catching the hard thrum of her pulse behind her ear. “The cold shouldn’t bother you any more, my lady.”

“It is not natural -”

“I can assist you with that too,” Arthur assures Glória, and kisses her again - both so gently she could cry.

After a few moments, Glória forgets how to.

After a few moments more, Glória forgets a lot of things, many things, except Arthur, and Arthur’s mouth, and his hands, and his furs, and all the pretty dancing lights she can see. 

In the morning, long, long after the ball has ended and the Veil has disappeared from the sky, after dawn has broken and filled the castle gardens with sunlight, a servant finds one of the Countess of Ophiussa’s golden snake armlets in the gardens, half-buried in fresh snow. The easily-identified jewellery is handed in so that it can be returned to its owner - but, despite the castle and its grounds being searched from top to bottom three times in increasing desperation, there is absolutely no sign of the Lytherian ambassador.


End file.
